


Antidote

by isellys



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Established Relationship, Forgiveness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4205577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isellys/pseuds/isellys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of the three-week Game, Sanae Hanekoma makes an apology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antidote

“H,” drawls out a voice from the doorway. “It’s been a while since I found you here.”

With lazy strides, Joshua crosses the floor so surely it’s like the apartment is his, not Sanae’s. He shrugs his jacket off so that it slides from him in a movement Sanae knows so well that he can only think of his own hands moving to catch the fabric, of Joshua turning, smirking. He watches Joshua as he ties some of his hair into a tiny ponytail, then grabs two glasses from the cupboard to pour himself some ginger ale and a fifth of Maker’s Mark for Sanae. It’s a routine Joshua let him disrupt so many times before, so it must all be intentional: the way the blue fabric would leave Joshua’s arms; the ponytail exposing the back of his neck; his clever fingers moving gracefully over glass, visible from a distance. This time Sanae allows himself only to look, and only because he can’t bring himself to look away. To touch would be to further cause harm. To further harm Joshua would only be an act of self-loathing.

Joshua settles down next to him on the sofa, handing him the bourbon. Sanae accepts it and takes a sip before putting it on the table.

“Look, Josh—“

“You know, I was thinking,” Joshua interrupts. “Dragon Couture is releasing this beautiful limited edition scarf and since I’m sure Megumi paid you a fortune for those pins, there’s no harm in sharing your success, is there?”

“Nah. No harm at all,” Sanae says.

“Hm. I’ve always liked that about you. Your generosity.”

Moving closer, Joshua sips his ginger ale and then places the glass next to Sanae’s. Then he turns to look at Sanae, a small smile gradually illuminating his face, which sums up all the unfairness in the world. It brings to mind a more hopeful Joshua, a Joshua of the past, who had not given up on the city he'd fought so hard to rule. Sometimes Sanae misses him, but only very rarely. He thinks the city must miss that Joshua all the time.

“Even if you don’t wanna hear it, I’m gonna say it: I’m sorry,” he says, before Joshua can change the subject again.

“What for?”

The smile on Joshua's face has already turned thin and brittle. Sometimes Sanae suspects that with him, not even honesty is for honesty's sake, and that shows of pain are sometimes meant to hurt Sanae. This time, though, he doesn't know what it's meant to do.

“For setting Minamimoto on you,” he says. Joshua’s expression breaks for a second before he has a mask in place, his features becoming cool and closed-off; the realization that he must’ve been in denial about it hits Sanae like a punch to the gut. Joshua is too smart not to figure it out and human enough to not want to believe it. “I didn’t want it to come to somethin' like that, if that’s worth anything. Hey,” he adds, as Joshua looks away, “you know I’ll always want you here.”

“You’ll always want me here,” Joshua repeats. “But you thought Shibuya wouldn’t. That the Angels wouldn’t. And of course your duty to the city and to Heaven comes before what _you_ feel.”

“Told you a long time ago that’s what it means to be Producer.”

Here Joshua turns to him again and touches Sanae’s jaw lightly, fingertips only barely ghosting over skin. His eyes are narrowed, his eyelashes silvery beneath the lights. Instead of wistful he looks frustrated. Sanae knows this look: it's how Joshua shows disappointment when he's failed himself.

“I always believed I’d be the one to change your mind.”

Sanae has to smile at that; of course Joshua thought so. He can never know, lest he understands the true extent of the power he wields over an Angel, but Joshua isn’t completely off the mark. Otherwise Sanae would’ve done the deed himself; otherwise, Joshua couldn’t possibly be here.

"J, I thought the same about me and you; guess we were both wrong 'bout each other,” he says softly. “If it makes you feel better, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Made a habit of that, haven’t we? It’s always worked before,” Joshua muses, so close now, his other hand playing with the fabric of Sanae’s shirt. A gesture from a million other nights.

“Didn’t end so well this time.”

“True,” Joshua agrees, pulling himself away. Without even thinking Sanae reaches for him, but Joshua evades the touch easily. Leaning on the other side of the sofa, casually, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, Joshua pulls his shoes off and props his legs up across the new distance between him and Sanae. He keeps his gaze steady and leans over only a little to steal Sanae’s glass, drinking its contents in one go.

“I’m exhausted; I’m going to bed. You can stay here and think about what you’ve done,” he says, as though Sanae were a misbehaving toddler. “I’ll do the same. Tomorrow I’ll see how I feel about it.”

“You almost destroyed Shibuya, Josh. Don't act like what I did came outta nowhere,” Sanae says, succeeding at keeping his voice even only because he’s had centuries of practice. How like Joshua to act like a wronged innocent. How like him, to go this far, thinking Sanae’s remorse would eclipse Joshua’s actions.

“I didn’t Erase the city.”

“But you planned to. You think I wanted to wait until the Angels come down to take care of it? If they wanted you gone, you’d be gone. Minamimoto—“

“—would give me a fighting chance?” Joshua asks. His tone is light, flippant. “Oh, he wasn’t much at all. I assure you I’m not _that_ worked up over breaking a sweat to put him in his place. I understand why you did it. But I wish it hadn’t been you.”

With that, Joshua gets off the sofa. Sanae looks at him furiously, helplessly, and when the bedroom door closes—gently, Joshua would never slam the door—he can only settle in the sofa, gazing at his empty glass and Joshua’s unfinished ginger ale. The only reason Sanae chose this apartment was because of the huge window, through which he could view Shibuya from the living room. (The décor was mostly Joshua, who had started ordering furniture and changing the walls and the flooring to match his many phases the moment he first set foot in it; Sanae let him because he couldn't really be bothered, anyway, since he doesn't really live in it—that honor falls to WildKat.) Outside, the night is far from inky, and the lights of the city never stop moving. He looks out the window and he sees Joshua tugging a scarf around himself; hears Joshua’s voice as he sings to himself in the morning, not knowing Sanae is awake; feels the wind as he stands next to the Composer on a rooftop, the night he finally earned the title, and he’d been but a boy then, and the city hadn’t been his.

Sanae loves the city no matter whose it is. It had wilted a little as Joshua began to look at humans with a colder eye, but here it is now, healing, vibrant, and still Sanae feels Joshua there. It wasn’t Sanae who had opened his eyes and saved Shibuya. He hadn’t been enough for the city, for Joshua. He isn’t good enough. There’s always a risk of going native in a Producer posting, though, and Sanae has caught the humans’ predisposition to sentiment, their susceptibility to temptation, how they selfishly put how they feel for the things they hold dear over those things themselves. So he will stay, if Shibuya will have him.

He doesn’t sleep, watching Shibuya. When it rises the sun is a cold beacon in the beginning of fall. The silver edge of every window lights itself with momentary fury. To love is to see the face of Heaven; and the face of Heaven, to Sanae, is made up of the streets before him, the buildings that glow at night and shine in the daytime, the rhythm of a thousand footsteps.

The sound of the door opening makes him look up. Joshua walks in wearing an old oversized shirt he must’ve left behind months ago. His expression is unreadable, his hair undone and made messy by sleep.

“I could do with some coffee right now,” Joshua declares, and when Sanae gets up to make some he makes himself comfortable on the sofa. Then, from there, he says: “I have a question.”

“Ask away, J.”

Joshua had given him the coffee machine last year. It’s the best Sanae’s ever had, and he’s gone through a lot of them.

“If Minamimoto actually managed to kill me, what would've happened?”

This he can answer without thinking. The scenario's unfolded in his head plenty of times, from when he was still planning it even as Joshua lay next to him, to when he was teaching Minamimoto the numbers; it's always been the same. He talks as he makes Joshua's coffee, focusing on the sound of the machine, the smell of the roast. He feels the heat of the ceramic spread over his skin as they come into contact.

“He’s Taboo Noise, so he never could've stayed Composer. The Angels would've found a way to bump him off and put someone else there. The city would've had to deal with the fallout and it wouldn’t be pretty, but it’d survive. I trusted the Angels to find good replacements for both Minamimoto and me.”

“For you?”

“Yeah. You think they’re gonna stand for a Producer who let the previous Composer almost Erase the city, then unleash Taboo Noise into the UG and put Taboo Noise on the Composer’s seat? I was Fallen for a while before they called me to the Heavenly Court, but if I messed up that much, if all that actually happened? Shit, Josh. They wouldn’t let me live.”

No reply. Sanae fills up his own cup after Joshua’s and hears footsteps coming closer. When he senses Joshua stand beside him, he doesn’t turn to look.

There’s something questioning in Joshua’s voice when he says, “So you’re only alive because I am.”

“Pretty much.”

This time he turns to Joshua, who takes the coffee from him with steady hands. Only now does Sanae actually realize what he implied with his words, and only now does he understand that that was why he chose to betray Joshua the way he did, with Taboo Noise. Something deep inside of him must have been resigned to the fact that the lines between him and Joshua—as Souls, as entities in Shibuya's Underground—have blurred so much that one wouldn't function without the other. Joshua must’ve worked it out before he did. That must be why he’s standing before Sanae right now, eyes bright with something like relief.

“Now that’s just immensely flattering. But also a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Joshua teases.

Sanae laughs.

“Look who’s talkin',” he says. Joshua shrugs, putting on his best look of exaggerated innocence, and easily as though it’s just another morning like the hundreds before it, he reaches for the pancake mix in the cupboard. He grabs the pan and spatula, and Sanae watches him, the way his hands are dusted with white when he accidentally spills some mix powder on them; the silvery strands of his hair that fall over dark fabric; how his shirt slips off his shoulder sometimes, and Sanae presses his hand to the pale skin there.

As he does so, Joshua turns and smirks.


End file.
